Blizzard went through a resource fetish in Cata and it’s stuck for specs.
That’s only applicable with Glacial Spike, which again is a talent not base line so it’s not really valid to count frost mage as a builder spender because of a talent that doesnt even get used ^^
not at all… since WoD I cannot find a class I like a lot. I settled to Monk and priest cause they were the most tolerable but dont wanna play other classes… seem the same
I went back to play pala in TBCC and they use mana. I definitely prefer this 
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What kind of mana?
I know it might sound stupid but when I play disc priest my mana lasts a very long time but takes forever to come back. Like minutes of no casting
On shadow priest I can heal myself like 2 times before I’m out of mana. But if I do nothing for a couple of seconds it’s full again
I raided a bit in TBCC before coming back to Retail and going oom was a regular thing in that. I didn’t enjoy the whole stand there and autoattack until it comes back up thing.
I think mana using classes are much better in the game these days. It’s a plentiful resource but having said that I don’t think I’d want to go back.
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I totally agree. Mana doesnt always feel good to play around, especially as a dps in tbc. On my enhancement shaman I have to thoroughly think through my spending and plan around my pot cooldown and my mana regeneration cd before doing anything. It kinda makes it interesting in some sense.
However, I’m also not a fan of modern class design. I’m not really a fan of spam shadowbolt either.
My favorite dps specs in tbc in terms of rotation/design are:
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ret pally
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fury
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enh
My favorite retail ones are:
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Elemental
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fire
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Enh
I think tbc kinda goes by less is more. Theres not many buttons or anything too extravagant to every spec, yet the role and purpose of each spec is very clear cut and unique. On retail I feel like every spec has been getting so many additions and buttons over the years that it all kinda homogenized altogether.
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what is ice lance and icicles?
Problem with retail is that I have 6 different classes that all feels too similar. I only need to change 1-2 keybinds for few special cooldowns and its the absolutely same character again.
After playing all the tanks, the differences feel so minor. Prot pala has handy aoe silence and good treath. Druid aoe treath sucks without tier set but its tanky as hell. DH has one button more to jump around, thats pretty much it. The toolkits are so similar on all of them.
Playing Warrior, Paladin or Druid feels so damn different in classic and tbc, I love it. You can never have perfect balance in this game, thats why the old classes felt special, even if some were more “optimal” at certain things. I prefer it the old way, new homogenisation sucks.
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builder spender was a big reason why i just didnt bother with moonkin anymore, was much more fun to hardcast starfire or lazerpewpew wraths and see some cool crits and on every cast. when 70-80% of what u do is wet noodle i just cba
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I much prefer a builder/spender rotation and playing around cooldowns over spamming shadowbolt and occasionally refreshing a dot until I run out of mana.
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u had cds back then as well. and u had to snapshot and stack trinket procs and trinkets use at correct time etc, was actually very funny and the giga crits are big part of the fun as oldstyle caster. now i dont even look at any numbers, its just meh, followed by more meh.
More power to you if you enjoy that kind of gameplay. I haven’t really got into WoW until late WoD/early legion despite having played on and off since WotLK, and the class design is the main reason. I never found the vanilla gameplay engaging at all.
It just comes down to personal preference in the end.
Me as oldschool caster. How much will crit next cast!?!, next cast, how much will i crit?. like every cast was a hype, i loved big numbers, and u had a chanse to get big numbers. its hard to explain, but i can tell u as a builder spender atm im not hyped at all during building, and that is majority of playing a caster these days
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Not at all how for example demo lock works. Playing around fitting as many demons into a tyrant is actually hella fun and situations where I’m able to fit over 15 imps, extend them, build another 15 within tyrant window and implode all of them at once at the end… it just feels good. I think half of the issue here is that most people just look a the soul shard bar and think “oh great, just another builder/spender spec”, while being completely oblivious to the details that make the spec work. It’s the same for many other specs. Might seem the same on the surface level but I can’t think of any two specs that actually feel “the same” to me. Not when understood and played properly.
yea, when playing playing caster i always preffered the ones with double dmg on crits, that wasnt for all casters back in the days. was destro,mage and moonkin i think. not sure about the rest. but yea braging about ur crits and linking each other printscreens from big crtits, as well as breaking old crit records. was a huge part of why it was cool to be a hard hitting caster. and in moonkins case, they were the best scaling nukers who had i think it was 100% power gain from spell power or was it more, i dont remember any longer, while others had only likee 50-80% power gains. so moonkin fully buffed trinket,debuffs and totems, hit like something you dont wanna see.
back then even i had fun in pvp, when i could 1-2 shot the happy flower pickers or alike, always on duty to give bad players a good experience, and i think i made some ppl scrach there heads, one moment alive the next his gone. haha. and since i was druid as well, i was a sneaky clown, killing ppl who are totally unware xD… oldshool moonkin the meanest beast,
I don’t know what OP was hoping for but as far as I see it the alternative is either a passive regeneration resource like mana or energy (no combo points or chi) or simply a cooldown based style with no real resource like enhancement shaman is right now.
Personally think holy power works great for paladin and helped me become 100% sure that paladin would be my main for the next 13 years
I wouldn’t even be playing my paladin if not for the set. The set is the only reason why I picked paladin for season 3. Holy power is just not fun at all. “Oh, you want to heal? Well you need to crusader strike some more to get HP”. BFA holy paladin was a lot more fun. Or for prot “Oh, you’re not specced into blessed hammer and want to get sotr up as you pull? Well, too bad, your hp generation is awful outside of combat.”.
Yeah the tier set is great and has honestly made 9.2 my fav version of pally in a few years.
I only play ret tho so maybe holy and prob aren’t as good. Last comment sounds like you mean all there